Tokyo Correspondence

Announcing YuriKageyama.com

2011-07-08T19:49:00.000-07:00

This is my brand new web site _ Yuri Kageyama dot com. Thank you Ian Lynam for brilliant design work, a delightful collaboration process and being a patient and fun teacher. I hope I have lots to update on this site. And I hope to keep writing on this blog like the diary and running notebook for my poems that it has always been. And oh, we got another reading: at The Booksmith in The Haight, a day after the big book party at Yoshi's.

Please come to my Book Party

2011-06-28T04:29:00.000-07:00

BOOK PARTY:
A celebration of Music and Poetry upon the publication of
YURI KAGEYAMA's "The New and Selected Yuri: Writing From Peeling Till Now" from Ishmael Reed Publishing Co.
ERIC KAMAU GRAVATT, drummer for McCoy Tyner, Weather Report, Source Code, Charles Mingus, Stanley Clark, Wayne Shorter and many others.
ISAKU KAGEYAMA, drummer for Amanojaku, a Tokyo taiko group, Toshinori Kondo, fusion trio Hybrid Soul.
MAKOTO HORIUCHI guitar/musical director.
Special Guests ISHMAEL REED poet, TENNESSEE REED poet and HIROYUKI SHIDO bass.
At Yoshi's restaurant in San Francisco
1330 Fillmore Street (at Eddy)
TEL: 415-655-5600.
Tickets at Yoshi's Box Office: http://sfyoshis.inticketing.com/
$15 advance/$20 at door covers both sets 8 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.
An evening that challenges preconceptions, crosses borders without even thinking about it and ever so whimsically mixes into a ferocious blend a range of cultures, generations and genres coming together in a single courageous voice of Poetic Song.

Isaku takes taiko to another place

2011-05-27T20:42:00.000-07:00

Isaku Kageyama believes taiko must claim its legitimate place in the world of great music.
Japanese culture is beautiful.
But unless Japan can be part of the world and see its place in the true sense _ with all the duties, responsibilities as well as rewards involved _ it won't work.
Art is a way of facing up to that important and universal Question _ and maybe one of the few ways where there is a true Answer.
Luis Silva made this multicultural video statement in his gorgeous documentary for WeAllJapan, that says it all.
LONG LIVE GREAT JAPANESE TAIKO MUSIC.

I have a new book out: "The New and Selected Yuri"

2011-02-27T04:29:00.000-08:00

I have a new book out: "The New and Selected Yuri _ Writing From Peeling till Now," Ishmael Reed Publishing Co. ( Amazon US site hardcover, Amazon Japan hardcover, Amazon US paperback, Japan paperback, ebooks coming soon.)
Reed's partner Carla Blank, author, performer, director, dance instructor, edited the book and led me every step of the way.
Reed, an award-winning poet, novelist, playwright and professor emeritus at the University of California Berkeley, where I was a student, published my first book of poems "Peeling" in 1988.
"The New and Selected Yuri" compiles the best of my writing _ poetry, fiction and essays _ from the 1970s, including my first poem to ever get published (also by Ishmael Reed) in iconic Berkeley literary magazine "Y'Bird" _ to today.
It is one of those strange happenings in life that has connected me to Reed over all these years.
I still don't understand it at all.
Reed not only published my new book. He also wrote the Foreword:

The Yuricane

They’ve called Yuri “cute” often during her life. She’s cute all right. Like a tornado is cute. Like a hurricane is cute. This Yuricane. I found that out when she was a student at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1970s. One of her poems about iconic white women became an underground hit on campus.
In 2009 the audience at New York City’s Bowery Poetry Club was also blown away by her poem, “Little YELLOW Slut,” a devastating look at the way Asian women are depicted in the media.
The New and Selected Yuri includes poems like this; the manner by which Japanese women are imprisoned behind a “Noh mask,” but Kageyama doesn’t leave it at that.
Unlike many American Gender First feminists,she is capable of understanding how men are also victims of outmoded customs, though they are not dismissed merely as “reproductive machines,” as one minister was caught saying in an unguarded moment. Women should be “quiet” and have bok choy ready when the men come home from
drinking with the boys.
It’s also the women, who bear the miscarriages, the abortions, the rapes, the beatings from a father, who, years later, can’t give an explanation for why he did it. In the United States, the white men who own the media and Hollywood blame the brutality against women on the poor and minority men. White middle class women, and their selected minority women, who want to remain on their payrolls in business,
politics and academia, have become surrogates in this effort.
Courageously, Yuri Kageyama debunks this myth and correctly calls out men of all backgrounds and classes as women abusers. The father who inflicts gratuitous punishment upon his daughter is a NASA scientist.
These poems are honest. Blunt. When she says that writing a poem is like taking “a bungee jump,” she means it.
Very few of the world poets have Yuri Kageyama’s range. Her poems critique Japanese as well as American society. The Chikan. The arrogance of the gaijin, who, even when guests in a country, insist that everybody be like them. Some are erotic. You might find allusions to Richard Wright, Michelangelo, John Coltrane. Music is not only entertainment but like something that one injects, something that invades the nervous system.
I asked writer Haki Madhubuti, what he meant by African Centrism. He said that it was based upon selecting the best of African traditions.
Some of Yuri Kageyama’s poems might be considered Nippon Centric. She wants to jettison those customs that oppress both men and women, especially the women, and keep those of value. The Kakijun, The Enryo and The Iki.
Ishmael Reed
Oakland, California
July 8, 2010

I hope I live up to those words.

Haiku for Van Gogh

2011-02-27T03:54:00.000-08:00

Haiku for Van Gogh
by Yuri Kageyama

An old wooden desk
Yellow dots of light shrieking
Van Gogh's room

Warped plums dagger rain
Crazed geisha dance in ukiyoe oil
Breathe Van Gogh's Japan

Sliced ear of love denied
Road to nothing ravens in flight
Genius of yellow

Fun music in Tokyo

2011-02-11T06:46:00.000-08:00

Taiko drummer Isaku Kageyama shows he can swing on traps drums as well, delivering the pulse for Keisuke Kato, the guitarist singing his composition for a Valentine's LOVE get-together at St. Blue in Asakusa, Tokyo, THU Feb. 10, 2011.
Some buzzing in the first part of the Ustream video but OK otherwise for an iPhone effort.
Below, the encore they said they wouldn't do _ so it's impromptu, blog readers and Ben E. King.
Thanks for the music, guys.
Everybody had a great time.

Music in Tokyo (again)

2011-01-23T03:18:00.000-08:00

Tokyo rocks when Carl Freire picks up his guitar and gets up on stage.
And what a steady hand I have as videographer with my iPhone.
Please admire Carl _ and my steady hand.

Abortion _ a poem by Yuri Kageyama

2011-01-23T02:54:00.000-08:00

Abortion
_ a poem by Yuri Kageyama

circling earth spinning mind
I dread the scalpel and the guilt
the blood does not come

words careless words carefree
letters like scalpels that bleed
I am made of words

so without love
the fetus wrenched from within
so I turn to words

a story stillborn
abortion resurrected
yet I am made of words

taste the characters
sumi stroke patterns cover
my pale naked skin

come home my baby
womb wounds of words gaping wide
uterus darkness

^ --- <

This is a poem that developed out of an exchange with a writer on Twitter. The lines are all from my part of the exchange, but we set up a rule so that each had to follow an idea from the other, especially the last line, as an inspiration springboard for the next three lines of haiku. We wrote three lines each day. And we took turns. I never told this other person I was writing about abortion. I have subsequently changed the "we" in some lines to "I." I guess I wanted the statements to be softer in the Twitter exchange by making them come from "we." But I really meant "I." I am grateful to the tweeter who helped me write this poem, a segment at a time, a day at a time, and to Twitter for giving us as a tool for personal poetic expression. It has a different feel from a poem written in a single sitting.

mix of taiko beats out the new in familiar sounds

2010-12-16T18:51:00.000-08:00

Click on this, "Midare Uchi" to watch on YouTube in a rare collaboration by drummers from three Tokyo groups plus a kawaii guest.
from the recent BEAT AHEAD at Roppongi's SuperDeluxe in Tokyo starring Isaku Kageyama of Amanojaku, Yuu Ishizuka of Bachiatari and Makoto Sekine of Medetai.
Below, they join forces on "Bujin" the trademark Amanojaku piece by master composer Yoichi Watanabe.
Click on this to see that _ also on YT as the embedding isn't working for some reason.

Haiku by Yuri Kageyama

2010-12-10T08:31:00.001-08:00

Haiku by Yuri Kageyama

a blue plastic bag
so hard so still no more
Tokyo train tracks

in my deathly dreams
your sweet breath, fat knees, wet hands
a child forever

timeless tweet timeline
scroll blindly touch-panel light
mumbles of loneliness

I wrote these recently, the last one just a few seconds ago.
The first one is about the body bags that we see lying by the railroad tracks because a fair number of Japanese people commit suicide by flinging themselves in front of commuter trains.
It is stunning how the bags have an eerily impersonal color, and they are motionless and rigid.
But you can tell for some reason that it is a body in there, nothing else.
There is nothing that we can do as witnesses except to pray.
The body bags are a constant reminder of the otherworldly closeness of death amid the mundane like riding the commuter train to work.
They seem to increase during the winter months _ maybe because cold is more depressing than warm, especially if you are feeling down, and maybe because the year-end and New Year's holiday season comes as a stark reminder of how extremely alone a lonely person really is.
My third poem is about Twitter, which I do quite actively because it is encouraged on my job.
I see how people want to connect to others, not just the people they know in real life, but to others they will never meet.
It's called networking, and it shows how the world is a small place in this rapidly globalizing age.
As the world turns, the iPhone touch-panel whirls under your fingertips as you scroll the Twitter timeline, showing comments from all over the world, mostly about nothing, and photos of dinners and lunches and sunsets and pets.
It is a cool technology and a convenient tool.
But it is also about how people are alone but can't stand to be by themselves.
People are lonely.
The poem in-between is about my recurring dreams, where my son, who is fully grown in his 20s, is still a toddler.
My little boy.
I wake up, looking for him, almost panicked, wondering if he is OK, and then I am relieved there is no need to worry.
It is just a dream.
I have always believed death would be like a dream, except you never wake up.
And so I realize these dreams are a reminder that I am still always reliving motherhood, though I am just growing older and getting closer to death.
I'm reliving that moment of motherhood, with my son being that eternal child, and death will not be an end at all but a recurring dream.
I feel as though I am going backward in time.
Life has no beginning or end.
Death is just a string of pockets of different dreamlike moments, in no particular order, in and out, falling and flying and rising, being lost in a blurry faraway dream.

Previous Haiku by Yuri Kageyama.

Music in Tokyo

2010-12-10T08:15:00.000-08:00

Heard the other day at Gamuso, a cool artsy dive in Tokyo where I have read poetry with music a couple of times, Samm Bennett on the diddley bow, a one-string instrument made of a marron glace box, speaking a million words with a single string, his voice and his heart.

Taiko as REAL MUSIC in Tokyo

2010-11-13T03:06:00.000-08:00

Not your everyday around-the-corner taiko, this is serious music that challenges the boundaries of ethnic tradition and identity and universal eternal art.
Isaku Kageyama with Daisuke Watanabe and Chris Holland of Amanojaku Tokyo's top taiko group led by master drummer and composer Yoichi Watanabe play in a collaborative concert with Yuu Ishizuka, and Makoto Sekine.
SUN Nov. 28 6 p.m.
at Roppongi SuperDeluxe
3-1-25-B1 Nishi Azabu Minato-ku Tokyo, Japan.
TEL: 03-5412-0515
3,500 yen w/advance reservation.
4,000 yen at the door.

becky nao

2010-10-17T04:33:00.000-07:00

becky nao
a poem by Yuri Kageyama

becky nao
kicked me so my shins turned purple
taunted me daily mimicking my voice
becky nao
believed there was only one slot
for an Asian girl in fourth grade class
becky nao
the white girls weren't rivals
only me, the one other Oriental girl,
becky nao
slit eyes and black hair,
good grades, neat handwriting
becky nao
if i fell dead, gone, wiped out,
she could be that survivor yellow girl
becky nao
who's going to tell us apart?
so there can be only one of us
becky nao
flicks her eyelashes at blond boys
flaunting a fetish, even at age 10
becky nao
fat face, fat calves
her fat belief as the solitary token
becky nao
hatred curled tight in a nasty gnarl
all for wishing to be that China doll
becky nao

Taiko drummers Isaku Kageyama, Yuu Ishizuka, Makoto Sekine at Super Deluxe

2010-10-03T06:06:00.000-07:00

Drummer Isaku Kageyama of Amanojaku collaborates with Yuu Ishizuka of Bachiatari and Makoto Sekine of Taikoshownin Medetai to explore new possibilities in MODERN TAIKO.
at Super Deluxe in Roppongi, Tokyo.
SUN Nov. 28, 2010.
Doors open 5:30 p.m. Music starts 6 p.m.
advance 3,500 yen. door 4,000 yen.
Make your reservations online.
B1F 3.1.25 Nishi Azabu, Minato-ku,
Tokyo 106-0031, Japan
tel: 03-5412-0515
5 minutes walk toward Nishi Azabu on Roppongi dori from Roppongi station (Hibiya Line or Oedo Line).
30 seconds walk from Roppongi 6-chome bus stop (TO-01 Shinbashi >> Shibuya).
1 minute walk from Roppongi 6-chome bus stop (TO-01 Shibuya >> Shinbashi).

More Mother Earth Orchestra

2010-10-03T06:02:00.001-07:00

Video/photos by Ryan Bruss.
Mother Earth Orchestera Sept. 23, 2010 at Kuraki Noh Theater
Isaku Kageyama taiko/cajon
Winchester Nii Tete African kpanlogo, odono and other drums
Nata didgeridoo
Cari electric guitar

MEO photos by Luis Silva

2010-09-30T21:18:00.000-07:00

Great photos by Luis Silva _ a video-journalist/photographer/artist who creates We All Japan _ from the recent Noh stage concert by Isaku Kageyama and his Mother Earth Orchestra.

Goals to go for

2010-09-30T19:27:00.001-07:00

What I found and was happy to find from taiko drummer Isaku Kageyama and what is the dream of all arists:

I wanted to play at the highest possible level that was humanly imaginable.
I wanted a feeling that somehow the music I was playing was “my own.”

Amanojaku's Dotou

2010-09-24T05:39:00.000-07:00

Found on YouTube this video of Amanojaku performing "Dotou" at a Tokyo school July 2010.
They smoke!
A great taiko tune by Amanojaku leader and master drummer Yoichi Watanabe.
From left to right:
Isaku Kageyama, Chris Holland and Daisuke Watanabe.

MOTHER EARTH ORCHESTRA

2010-09-24T04:58:00.000-07:00

from left to right
Winchester Nii Tete, NATA, Cari and Isaku Kageyama.

Mother Earth Orchestra brought together instruments from various continents to a Noh Theater to take us on a musical journey that showed great potential of innovation.
It showed the music is truly evolving from its launch at Tokyo Harajuku Crocodile just a month ago.
Music allows for such development through collaborations that can be more than the sum of its parts.
And Music directs us to further fulfillment.

Isaku Kageyama's Mother Earth Orchestra

2010-09-22T05:51:00.000-07:00

ISAKU KAGEYAMA and the MOTHER EARTH ORCHESTRA at Yokohama Kuraki Noh Theatre

Taiko, African percussion, digeridoo and electric guitar celebrate our time on Mother Earth with organic beats and melodies.

THURSDAY, September 23 6:30 p.m. (doors open at 6 p.m.)
Kuraki Noh Theatre 8-21-7 Okamura Isogo-ku Yokohama
2,500 yen (2,000 yen with reservations: e-mail Isaku @isakukageyama@gmail.com

How to get to Kuraki Noh Theatre

A 15 minute cab ride from Isogo Station.
Or take bus 64 or 78 from Isogo station on the JR line or Byobugaura station on the Keikyu line and get off at Sasabori.
Five minute walk from Sasabori bus stop.

MOTHER EARTH ORCHESTRA

Cari (guitar)
NATA (digeridoo)
Winchester Nii Tete (percussion)
Isaku Kageyama (taiko)

マザー・アース・オーケストラ久良岐能舞台でライブ

和太鼓、アフリカン・パーカッション、ディジュリデュ、ギターのコラボバンドとして独自の音楽性を持つマザー・アース・オーケストラが久良岐能舞台にてライブを行います。

日時： 9月23日（木・祝）開場18：00　開演18：30
場所：久良岐能舞台（神奈川県横浜市磯子区岡村8-21-7）
料金：当日2500円　予約2000円

予約は： isakukageyama@gmail.com までメールをお送りください。

久良岐能舞台へのアクセスはこちらをご覧ください：
http://www.kuraki-noh.jp/navigation.pdf

出演：

影山伊作 (和太鼓)
太鼓集団天邪鬼の正メンバーとして国内外で活躍し、ミュージシャンとしても多大な可能性を感じさせる期待の若手奏者。太鼓集団天邪鬼の舞台で見せる本格的な和太鼓演奏に加え、ジャンルを超えた様々なアーティストとの熱いセッションにも注目が集まるマルチプレーヤー。

伝統と創造、和と洋、古来とアヴァンギャルド、様々な要素が交差する独自の音楽性を活かし、コンサートホール、ライブハウス、クラブイベント、レコーディング、舞台のみならず、CM（あいおい損保・新日本建物）や数多くのテレビ番組（SMAP X SMAP、未来図鑑）に出演。

ジャズトランペットの近藤等則、DJ Yama aka Sahib、アフリカン・パーカッションのWinchester Nii Tete、ロックギタリストのCariなどとのコラボレーションに加え、ロックギター、ジャズベースとのコラボバンド「Hybrid Soul」や民謡バンド「Minyo Ensemble of Tokyo」を立ち上げるなど、幅広い音楽活動が高く評価されている。

with
Cari (ギター)
NATA (ディジュリデュ)
ウィンチェスター・ニー・テテ(パーカッション)

Poem Breaking Silence

2010-09-04T21:13:00.000-07:00

My poem "Disco Chinatown" is in "Breaking Silence," an anthology of Asian American poetry (1983: Greenfield Review Press) featured in the latest edition of this online magazine "asiacana."

Disco Chinatown
a poem by Yuri Kageyama

street blood throbbing
punk maggots of the slums with fake ID's
smelling British sterling
cover the stink of sweat, car grease and dirt
and the blood from being cut up by a Jo
or is it W.C?
slant eye to slant eye talking
smooth talking or trying,
"hey, baby-
looking nice tonight"
spilling sunrises
margaritas
bourbons with cherries
giddy easy striding to make it to my table
in your own eyes, a ghetto knight,
"wanna drink?"
in a flash and a flick, light my cigarette
the dance floor is dead tonight
linoleum cracked
the Filipino D.J. Berkeley Asian American Studies drop out is stoned
and even the lights look neon sleazy
you want me to move, a wax museum dancing doll, under your macho
gaze,
or in your arms, rocking following your rocks,
layered black hair,
moustache, always, to tickle the quick kisses,
cheap shiny shirt, four buttons open,
a jade pendant swaying against yellow brown flesh,
darker brown leather and long long legs,
you want to take me home
and the grip on my shoulder tightens,
you driving a Camaro Z28?
an Olds 442?
a broken down Malibu?
a Caddy Eldorado?
you want to be rich someday
you want to enjoy life, you say,
cuz it's so so short,
ALL girls want you for their old man,
"in bed, I have a good body,
opium makes me last
and last
I'm ten inches
and, "a smile,
"this thick"
you play the mind games with a too ridiculous seriousness
not another escape out just for kicks
your street male pride can't take no scratches
you'll kick my ass when the number I give you isn't mine
you tell me not to dance with anyone else
when I just met you tonight
and isn't your old lady waiting at your apartment?
hardened hard up
Ricksha stray tiger cat
your life view quite
doesn't
touch mine
and being gang banged isn't my type of thrill
disco steps don't silence sirens
and the skyscraper lights don't touch Grant Avenue on a Friday night
Golden Dragon massacred meat can't ever be pieced back together again
black lights and hanging ferns or Remy sweetness can't hide
spilled out alley fish guts
that tell you and tell you
there just ain't no future
your hands grope
your eyes closed
your tongue dry
your penis limp
poor ChinaMAN-child

Yuricane after action

2010-09-04T19:24:00.000-07:00

Poetry and Music in Tokyo this Saturday

2010-09-02T21:23:00.000-07:00

I'm used to talking to myself.
But please stop by for the Yuricane poetry and music SAT Sept. 4 at 7 p.m. (doors open 6:30 p.m.)
Gamuso in Asagaya, Tokyo.
FREE ADMISSION.

Excerpted from the foreword by Ishmael Reed for my upcoming book of poems and short stories, "The New and Selected Yuri: Writing From Peeling till Now":

The Yuricane (an excerpt)
By Ishmael Reed

They’ve called Yuri “cute” often during her life. She’s cute all right. Like a tornado is cute. Like a hurricane is cute. This Yuricane. I found that out when she was a student at the University of California at Berkeley.
One of her poems about iconic white women became an underground hit on campus.
The audience at the Bowery Poetry Club was also blown away by her poem, "Little YELLOW Slut," a devastating look at the way Asian women are depicted in the media ....

Little YELLOW Slut
By Yuri Kageyama
first published in KONCH MAGAZINE, 2009.

You know her:
That Little YELLOW Slut, proudly gleefully
YELLOW-ly hanging on Big Master's arm,
War bride, geisha,
GI's home away from home,
Whore for last samurai,
Hula dancer with seaweed hair,
Yoko Ohno,
Akihabara cafe maid,
Hi-Hi Puffy Ami/Yumi,
Kawaiiii like keitai,
Back-up dancer for Gwen Stefani,
Your real-life Second Life avatar
Eager to deliver your freakiest fetish fantasies,
Disco queen, skirt up the crotch,
Fish-net stockings, bow-legged, anorexic, raisin nipples, tip-toeing Roppongi on
Stiletto heels.

Yessu, i spikku ingrishhu, i raikku gaijeeen, they kiss you,
hold your hand, open doors for me,
open legs for you, giggling pidgin, covering mouth,
so happy to be
Little YELLOW Slut.

Everybody's seen her:
That Little YELLOW Slut, waiting at
Home, cooking rice, the Japanese
Condoleezza Rice,
Smelling of sushi,
Breath and vagina,
Fish and vinegar,
Fermented rice,
Honored to be
Cleaning lady,
Flight attendant for Singapore Airlines,
Charlie Chan's Angel,
Nurse maid, gardener, Japan-expert's wife,
Mochi manga face,
Yodeling minyo, growling enka,
Sex toy, slant-eyes closed, licking, tasting, swallowing STD semen,
Every drop.

Yessu, i wanna baby who looohkuh gaijeen, double-fold eye, translucent skin, international school PTA,
maybe grow up to be fashion model, even joshi-ana,
not-not-not happy to be
Little YELLOW Slut.

I recognize her:
That Little YELLOW Slut, rejecting
Japanese, rejected by Japanese,
Ashamed,
Empty inside,
They all look alike,
Faceless, hoping to forget, escape
To America,
Slant-eyed clitoris,
Adopted orphan,
Dream come true for pedophiles,
Serving sake, pouring tea, spilling honey,
Naturalized citizen,
Buying Gucci,
Docile doll,
Rag-doll, Miss Universe, manic harakiri depressive, rape victim, she is
You, she is me.

Hai, hai, eigo wakarimasen, worship Big Master for mind, matter, muscle, money, body size correlates to penis size,
waiting to be sexually harassed, so sorry, so many,
so sad to be
Little YELLOW Slut.

The Yuricane at PAINT YOUR TEETH in Tokyo

2010-08-29T01:19:00.000-07:00

The Yuricane
Yuri Kageyama poetry
Winchester Nii Tete percussion
Takenari Shibata electric guitar
Toshinori Takimoto drums
Gobe bass

We kick off PAINT YOUR TEETH No. 9 at 7 p.m.
SAT. Sept. 4
FREE ADMISSION
A Book Party for David Hoenigman author of "Burn Your Belongings"
at Gamuso
an Art and Music Bar

Takuei Building 2-3 floors
2-12-5 Asagaya Kita
Suginami Tokyo
Japan 166-0001
TEL: 03-5364-9096

North Exit of JR Chuo Line Asagaya station.
Left before Cozy Corner
Right on 3rd small lane.
Left in front of TOA Sports
Walk until Gamuso Chroma is on your right.
Gamuso is on the second and third floors.

at Music Man in Tokyo Aug. 28, 2010, also including Haruna and Teruyuki Kawabata of Cigarette She Was.
White Rabbit courtesy of Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane.
Little YELLOW Slut a poem by Yuri Kageyama, first published in KONCH (I. Reed Books, 2009).
A poem cozies up with classic rock 'n' roll, performed with generous permission from the great Grace Slick to make possible Yellow meets White in a musical celebration of diversity, freedom and poetry.

behold the egg

2010-08-27T01:04:00.000-07:00

behold the egg
a poem by Yuri Kageyama

behold the egg
boil it with a pinch of salt
for the simplest meal
full of Vitamin D
behold the egg
paint it pink, blue, green
to hide and find for Easter
remember resurrection
behold the egg
embraced by a brittle shell
the secret of life
not quite round but whole
behold the egg
waiting blind and eyeless
for a blind, eyeless sperm
to give birth that can finally see
behold the egg
behold the egg

up close video of Mother Earth Orchestra

2010-08-23T06:12:00.000-07:00

better view and sound courtesy of bassist Craig Harris and more on his Facebook video section.
Thank you Craig Harris.

Mother Earth Orchestra at Harajuku Crocodile Aug. 19, 2010

2010-08-23T04:41:00.000-07:00

"Improvisation"
Kazutoki Umezu (sax)
NATA (digeridoo)
Craig Harris (bass)
Winchester Nii Tete (percussion)
Isaku Kageyama (taiko and percussion)

clips of music tonight

2010-08-19T08:51:00.000-07:00

Video from my iPhone at links below just to give you an idea of what happened.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/9017533

better quality video upcoming soon on YouTube:

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/9018480

at Harajuku Crocodile in Tokyo Thursday evening Aug. 19, 2010.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/9018530

the Music will get better.

music tonight

2010-08-19T00:21:00.000-07:00

please come to the Crocodile in Omotesando tonight (see previous blog post for details).
follow Isaku Kageyama on Twitter _ @isakukageyama
and claim your free beer tonight:
木曜日に原宿クロコダイルでライブやります。　僕に「ツイッターで見た」と話しかけてくれればクロコダイルビールご馳走します。　http://j.mp/cCTDlM
Playing at Harajuku Crocodile from 20:00 on Thursday the 19th. I'll buy you a beer if you make it out!
Isaku will be cooking up a melting plot of a hot groove with Japanese sax legend Kazutoki Umezu, master percussionist from Ghana Winchester Nii Tete, bassist virtuoso from the US Craig Harris and a Japanese who plays an aboriginal instrument NATA.
No borders for this batch.

Mother Earth Orchestra

2010-08-15T09:28:00.000-07:00

Isaku Kageyama on taiko drums will lead his Mother Earth Orchestra, a multicultural celebration of sound, with Winchester Nii Tete on African drums, Kazutoki Umezu on saxophones, Craig Harris on bass and Nata on didgeridoo.
It's Great Japanese Music from modern-day Tokyo that follows proudly in the footsteps of the Art Ensemble of Chicago _ an energetic driving groove, where anything goes.
It is funky, fun, free.
And it's the kind of exhilarating music that makes everything seem somehow a lot easier to bear.
At the Crocodile in Harajuku Thursday Aug. 19.
Doors open 6:30 p.m. Music starts 8 p.m.
6-18-8 B1 Jingumae Shibuya-ku Tokyo
TEL: 03-3499-5205.
3,000 yen admission (drinks, food available but will cost you extra).
For more information, email Isaku at isaku.kageyama@amanojaku.info
Isaku Kageyama is an award-winning taiko drummer and a member of Tokyo-based taiko ensemble Amanojaku, and teaches taiko not only all over Japan but also in Brazil and in the U.S.
He also plays with musicians of various genres, including Toshinori Kondo, Winchester Nii Tete, Seijuro Sawada, Cari, Terumasa Hino and Yoshinori Kikuchi.
He leads his taiko rock group called Hybrid Soul, with Chris Young on electric guitar and Pat Glynn on bass, which is coming out with a CD this year.
The point through all this is to cross musical and cultural boundaries to claim a legitimate and respected place for taiko and Japanese-American music in the legacy of modern art and innovation.
Isaku, 28, was born in San Francisco and began studying at age 6 with Kenny Endo, formerly of San Francisco Taiko Dojo, who now works out of Hawaii and is one of America's most respected taiko drummers.
Isaku began studying with Yoichi Watanabe of Amanojaku, master composer in modern Tokyo-style taiko, shortly after he began his studies with Kenny Endo.
Isaku Kageyama now performs with Amanojaku all over Japan and abroad, and has done concerts in Rio De Janeiro, Denver, Honolulu and other cities.
He has also taken part in Japanese TV shows with SMAP, Shuzo Matsuoka, Tsunku and the Sumida River fireworks, as well as in TV ads for Aioi Insurance Company.
Follow Isaku Kageyama on Twitter: @isakukageyama
Listen to his music on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/isakukageyama

electronic taico by Isaku Kageyama in Tokyo

2010-08-07T06:42:00.000-07:00

Taiko drummer Isaku Kageyama will be among those playing at Summer Sounds at Laputa in Aoyama _ a restaurant, swimming pool and music club all in one in Tokyo _ next Saturday, Aug. 14 at about 8 p.m.
The event starts at noon and continues until 11 p.m. Admission is free if you get there by 2 p.m. (if you're into that).
The flyer giving samples of artists' performances here.
Isaku's take on the endeavor in his blog entry here.
So eat, swim, dance, groove, sit aorund, whatever but listen to good music.

Amanojaku at Super Deluxe in Tokyo in May 2010

2010-07-24T01:26:00.000-07:00

the younger members of Amanojaku a taiko group in Tokyo
from left to right:
Chris Holland, Isaku Kageyama, Daisuke Watanabe, Hiromi Sekine.

Winchester Nii Tete and Isaku Kageyama

2010-07-21T07:17:00.001-07:00

Winchester Nii Tete and Isaku Kageyama at Shinjuku Takanoya in Tokyo.
Children of music. Music is power. Music is spirit.

ways of saying 'yes' in Japanese

2010-07-19T08:07:00.000-07:00

ways of saying 'yes' in Japanese
a poem by Yuri Kageyama

"Hai!!"
That's the correct way of replying when spoken to in Japan for centuries, hai! the way people are taught in school, by their parents, what's right in society _
respect for the hierarchy, yes sir, thank you ma'am, hai hai hai, like hiccups, like hiphiphurray, hai! hai! hai! no pause, no hesitation, no thought,
following orders, quick, no questions, grunt it out, soldiers at attention, yelling, spitting, believing, say it with all your heart and mind,
hai!
"Haa~aai!"
That's the way people answer in Japan these says, haa~aai! the way people drop out of school, freeters, parents are just friends to follow only on Twitter _
flattening out the hierarchy, maybe yes, maybe not, haa~aai! like a mumble, like a whisper, a kiss on the ear, haa~aai, innocent, hurt only for others,
wind blowing in your hair, smiley faces heart icons in cell phones, improvise, imagine, immaculate, sing it without a care in the world,
haa~aai!

Toshinori Takimoto's Drum Circle

2010-06-27T06:18:00.000-07:00

"Drumming at the Edge of Magic: A Journey into the Spirit of Percussion," by Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart is Japanese drummer Toshinori Takimoto's bible.
And it shows in every way at his Drum Circle, a once-a-month gathering at a Tokyo suburb, a special spot for those who love the spirit of the drum, sharing in the oneness in the rhythms they create like a dance of sound.
Takimoto switches from one instrument to another, shaking a shekere, jangling a tambourine, whacking a djembe, sometimes orchestra conductor, sometimes master percussionist, sometimes fatherly teacher.
He jokes around, gesticulates like a mime, a shaman of the drum, all the time playing with energy, keeping the rhythm going so that everyone sounds pretty good.
Never fear: He won't get mad _ even if you mess up.
The players seated in a circle do the best they can to follow where the music is going in a jubilant outburst of Takimoto's drumbeat.
Playing together, keeping time to a primordial beat, brings harmony, says Takimoto, who has played with the big names in the Japanese pop music industry, including Yutaka Ozaki and Seiko Matsuda.
But he says he feels the kind of music he is pursuing with his Drum Circle is more him than the glitzy but often empty world of commercial music.
And somehow, each of us leaves his Drum Circle a gentler, maybe happier, person, a skip in our feet and a buzzing warmth in our hearts.

More photos by Katsumi Kasahara

2010-06-26T06:39:00.000-07:00

Photos from May 13, 2010 concert by Amanojaku in Tokyo.

Amanojaku concert - photos by Katsumi Kasahara

2010-06-26T05:56:00.000-07:00

Modern Music Ensemble of Tokyo

2010-06-26T04:48:00.000-07:00

Isaku Kageyama's Modern Music Ensemble of Tokyo seeks to break down boundaries, with an ambition inspired by the spirit of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and to show there is only good music and bad music, as the great Duke Ellington said.
Featuring taiko drumming(Isaku Kageyama), shakuhachi flute (Yoshinori Kikuchi), Tsugaru-style shamisen (Seiemon Sawada) and regular Western-style bass (Gian), mixing it all up with minyo folk songs, bluegrass, Cuban, pop and original compositions, embarking on a journey that is about one-ness, the "kizuna" of Music, and to claim for taiko and Japanese modern music a rightful place in that universal legacy.

A tribute in Tokyo for Eliazar a great drummer

2010-05-22T08:17:00.000-07:00

Clip from the May 15 musical tribute in Buddy, Tokyo for Venezuelan drummer Eliazar Yanes, who died Jan. 22. Taiko drumming and singing by Yoichi Watanabe, Hiromi Ogawa on taiko and percussion, traps drums by Takayoshi Tanaka, Katsunari Sawada on shamisen, Morris Reina on guitar and cuatro, Jun Ishibashi on vocals and guitar, and bassist Ikuo Okamoto.
Yanes studied taiko, believed music could unite people across nationalities and cultures, and felt a strong spiritual connection with his teacher Yoichi Watanabe of Amanojaku.
Yanes used to say he knows he was Japanese in a previous life. When he visited Watanabe for the first time in a kodan danchi in Tokyo, he was thrilled Watanabe, like him, was from the "barrios," so close was the resemblance in the housing complex.
Yanes was widely respected as a jazz drummer, but he was also instrumental in introducing taiko in Venezuela.
Watanabe learned about Yanes' death when Watanabe was in Brazil, on his international musical mission, teaching Japanese Brazilian youngsters taiko. Watanabe loved Yanes deeply. He wanted to play and sing for Eliazar in Heaven.
For that moment, Eliazar was with us _ right there in Buddy.
Music is an international language, the musicians said, beyond words, beyond war, beyond death.
Wait for us Eliazar, the musicians said, we will be there soon _ well, maybe not so soon but soon enough.
And we will play music together again.

Glass on AMANOJAKU

2010-05-16T02:03:00.000-07:00

Peter Yeoh of Glass magazine has some nice words to offer for Amanojaku.

PS to Tadanori Yokoo on Twitter (2)

2010-04-24T05:55:00.000-07:00

P.S. to Tadanori Yokoo on Twitter Part Two:
That is not to say that an artist isn't confident of one's value.
If you aren't sure you're worth godzillions of dollars, then you can't be an artist.
You would need to believe that to go on.
Yokoo tweets you just do what you do and then someone comes around who thinks it's great and pays for it.
He started out as a commercial artist and was extremely successful.
And then, in the 1990s he turned his back on all that suddenly and decided to become just an artist.
That's partly why his Twitter pronouncements about getting paid for art hold special meaning.

Annette Borromeo Dorfman

2010-04-24T02:23:00.000-07:00

Annette has been my friend for a long time because we used to ride the Chuo Line together to go to high school in Tokyo.
She is also a great artist.
This is one of her recent works.
Doesn't it look like someone went back in time and was there to take a photo of "Madonna and Child" and painted inspired by that photo like a magical-realist/photo-realist?
Isn't it a quirky but an absolutely sublime mix of old and new, the profound and the everyday?
The faces in her paintings are self-portraits as mother/woman/believer/goddess/artist/
because all art is about that.
This painting already got sold.
But there are others, which can be seen on her Facebook link.

Up-and-coming stars of AMANOJAKU taiko

2010-04-24T01:53:00.000-07:00

AMANOJAKU taiko drums at SuperDeluxe club in Roppongi, TOKYO.
The three younger stars of Amanojaku take their thunderous beat out of the usual concert halls to the hip-hop clubs of Tokyo.
The event explores where else taiko can go as modern music.
THU May 13, 2010. 8 p.m.
SuperDeluxe
3-1-25 Nishi Azabu Minato-ku
Tokyo, Japan
4,000 yen at door (3,500 yen advance) ticket includes one drink.
Photo (from left to right):
Daisuke Watanabe, Isaku Kageyama, Chris Holland.
They're all in their 20s, students of Amanojaku leader Yoichi Watanabe, but all play with him in the professional troupe, which just had a fantastic concert at Tokyo FM Hall last week.

More information on Amanojaku and to watch a video clip of Amanojaku.
Isaku's official website.

Tadanori Yokoo on Twitter (part three)

2010-04-08T18:45:00.001-07:00

Tadanori Yokoo on Twitter drops names and makes you hungry.
He says Yoko Ohno came by and had sirloin "tonkatsu" in the middle of the day because she is a sizzling greasy hot person, and he himself was a bit worried about heartburn.
He also says Yukio Mishima ate steak at least once a week because he believed that art is about the body, not just the mind, and forgetting the body in art makes you a big-headed wimp.

Tadanori Yokoo on Twitter (part two)

2010-04-08T18:30:00.001-07:00

Tadanori Yokoo on Twitter says, if you are doing what you truly believe in, what other people say ("hyoka" or social evaluation/assessment) doesn't matter.
No one really does art to get something back in return.
No one really knows if art is valid or not.
Evaluation/assessment is something that is determined by a commercial market, job contract or social hierarchy.
That's when evaluation/assessment becomes relevant _ and it must be fair and accurate or else someone is getting exploited, which goes contrary to what art is about from the get-go.
But it is important to remember that something monetary, contractual and social is involved in those endeavors in which evaluation/assessment takes meaning.
But art is not a job and has nothing to do with all that.
That is the privilege of art and also the painful difficulties of art.
Art by definition means you will never be properly evaluated.
No one will come pat you on the back and say: hey, your art is great.
Unless it is an evaluation/assessment that makes art commercial, a job or a reflection of social ranking, which isn't really about art at all but something just maybe related to art only in the sense that artists are human and need to eat and pay rent.
That is why doing any commercial marketing activity for your art is a big pain because you have to do it even though it isn't relevant or really meaningful.
At least, even if everyone ignores you and your art, you know you don't care.

Tadanori Yokoo on Twitter

2010-04-08T18:19:00.000-07:00

The way Tadanori Yokoo uses Twitter gives the technology a new dimension. He tweets the way he draws. It's an approach to life/death and meaning/meaninglessneess and the gaps/spaces in-between. He throws his words out as they cross his mind, reaching out to the other reality that is the shadow of death and the faraway universe inhabited by aliens calling out to us in beeps and brush strokes and gasps of a deranged poet. They come and go, lost into cyberspace, our blood, our flashes, our yearnings, our art. They are maybe ignored, cast away, or found and even treasured before being forgotten like grandmothers and mothers and aborted daughters, and they cross like sparkling crystal of stars through the black universe, hurling into consciousness and lives and thoughts and desperate clawing at art by lonely artists and careless carefree tweets.

wise words

2010-04-06T06:52:00.000-07:00

DO YR ART D WAY U WANT
ANYWAY U WANT
ANY WANGOL U WANT
ITS UP TO U/WHAT WILL WORK
FOR U.

_ from "Catechism of d Neoamerican Hoodoo Church," a poem by Ishmael Reed.

taiko vs hip-hop

2010-04-03T18:03:00.000-07:00

what does it mean to be Japanese? what does it mean to be American? what is yellow vs. what is black/white? what is Music? what is art? and what does it mean to be human? no easy answers ever but key questions in life and what being an artist is all about.

Taiko with bon odori tune "Hokkai Bon Uta"

Taiko with "Waterfalls" by TLC

Taiko with Snoop Doggy Dogg's "Ain't No Fun"

Amanojaku concert

2010-03-27T06:41:00.000-07:00

Amanojaku at Tokyo FM Hall
"HARU ICHIBAN (Spring Breeze)"

SUN April 18, 2010
3 p.m. (doors open 2:30 p.m.)

Taiko drumming by
Amanojaku leader/composer Yoichi Watanabe
with drummers
Hiromi Ogawa, Isaku Kageyama, Daisuke Watanabe, Hiromi Sekine, Chris Holland,
and guests
Kyosuke Suzuki on fue flutes, Katsunari Sawada on Tsugari shamisen
also
Amanojaku Hozonkai.

1-7 Kojimachi Chiyoda-ku Tokyo
TEL: 03-3221-0080
3 minute walk from exits 1 and 2 Hanzomon station on the Hanzomon Line.
6 minute walk from exits 1 and 2 Kojimachi station on the Yurakucho Line.

Advance tickets 4,000 yen
Same-day admission 4,500 yen

For tickets, please call Amaonojaku TEL: 03-3904-1745
Ticket Pia (from March 30, 2010)
Pコード：103-507　TEL:0570-02-9999
No reserved seating.

The Sociology of Hanami (flower-watching)

2010-03-27T02:45:00.000-07:00

Every year about this time of the year Japanese _ it seems every Japanese brings out big blue sheets of plastic to sit beneath cherry trees.
The practice of planting cheery trees in rows dates back to the Edo Period, where "hanami," or flower-watching, started and is depicted in ukiyoe scrolls.
The springtime party was a big equalizer for a culture dominated by the bustling "iki" merchant class _ so different from the stuck-up somber divisive nobility of the previous eras.
Beneath the trees exploding with blossoms, people sit flat on the ground as equals, eating, singing, talking in big voices, drinking, reveling in their equality, practicality and vulgarity.
The branches are foaming with pale pink blossoms, some petals wafting with their sweet scent likes pieces of chiffon.
In contrast, the food smells bad, poorly made sushi, fried chicken and noodles.
Canned beer is guzzled, and the talking is loud.
Only in a strictly hierarchical society would the symbolic equalizer of hanami be so highly valued.
Japanese thrive on the democratic myth of hanami.
Although the purpose of these gatherings is to look at flowers, no one bothers to ask if anyone is really looking.
It is unclear whether people are just pretending to have a good time or they are really having a good time.
Everyone knows there is no such thing as equality in Japan _ a nation where the dumbest man is superior to the most qualified woman, and status is won by seniority and inheritance and personal ties _ not performance or productivity _ and language and mannerisms are defined by where one stands in strictly defined rankings.
In fact, the lowliest one, like a woman or the newly hired recruit at a company, has to go early and mark out the hanami spot beneath a tree with the blue plastic to make sure no other group takes that spot.
Some equality.
The picnic continues into the night.
Too drunk, some people are barely able to stand.
Lovers of group behavior to the max, Japanese come out in hordes during hanami season, the two weeks or so when the cherry trees are in bloom.
No matter that the crowds sitting, in some parks, right next to each other like a commuter train, are nothing but a blight to the scenic landscape.
If you question hanami, if you are not having the ball of your life, you are not a true Japanese.

who is the poet? a poem by Yuri Kageyama

2010-03-02T04:28:00.000-08:00

who is the poet?
a poem by Yuri Kageyama

poets who pause to pontificate
poets who write for grants
poets who count syllables
poets who admire texture of words
i work and have no time
and i have no time for
poets who have all the time
poets who find poetic moments
poets who teach laureate poetry
poets who chatter on Facebook
it is blood in the veins
to kill and give birth and die
i am the true poet, not you
i am the true poet, not you
poets of the revolution
poets weeping tears at bars
poets who don't write lyrics
poets of pure soundless music
angels of suicide
bridge of neon, cliff of ice
we are the true poets, not you
we are the true poets, not you

message to marry

2010-03-02T04:25:00.000-08:00

Hi Marry
You left a very nice comment on my previous post, but I deleted it by mistake.
Thanks for being so supportive of my writing.
It would have been great to add your words to this whole effort.
Lots of love,
Yuri

Terumasa Hino

2010-02-27T02:42:00.000-08:00

Terumasa Hino with Toshiko Akiyoshi at Lake Biwa in 1986.

Sometimes there are moments in life that make an artist feel it was all worth it.
It helps when an older and more experienced artist is willing to give of him/herself and encourage a younger and less experienced artist _ giving assurance there is nothing to be afraid of, that all you have to do is be yourself.
Isaku felt just that last night _ with trumpet legend Terumasa Hino, of all people.
At a benefit for Haiti earthquake survivors, Hino casually picked up his trumpet, started playing his horn impromptu, its ring like a greeting, surprising Isaku from behind, but joining him in music, playfully chatting with Isaku's drumming, telling him there is nothing to be afraid of, that all you have to do is be yourself.
Unlike some aspects of life, dictated by shallow rules of winning vs. losing, where petty minds pursue a zero-sum game, and the whole and the sum of its parts only negate each other into shameless nothingness, music is the pure joy of life, where the sound that is wholeness is far more beautiful than the sum of its parts.
For just a few fun moments, jazz and taiko met.

Terumasa Hino at the Budokan in Tokyo 1992.

At One With Brazil

2010-01-24T02:25:00.000-08:00

Amanojaku's Yoichi Watanabe and Isaku Kageyama are now in Brazil to share the joy of taiko.
"Kizuna" was co-written by Watanabe and the late Daihachi Oguchi of Osuwa Daiko for the 100th anniversary of Japanese immigration to Brazil, celebrated June 21,
2008 by a performance of 1,000 Brazilian taiko drummers.
The first four minutes of the piece is trademark Oguchi, and then the song breaks into Amanojaku-style taiko that is totally and distinctly Watanabe.
Below is video of a group in Brazil performing "Kizuna" in December:

And this is the same song performed by Amanojaku and students in Japan:

Amanojaku traveled to Brazil 6 times during 2004-2008, teaching more than 600 Japanese-Brazilian youngsters.
The performance was attended by 37,000 people, including Crown Prince Naruhito.
"Kizuna" means "bond" in Japanese _ what is in our heritage and our blood that transcends boundaries and the passage of time to connect people in spirit.
Amanojaku has continued to go to Brazil to teach in 2009 _ and now in 2010.

Amanojaku at Sogetsu Hall

2010-01-16T10:18:00.001-08:00

Amanojaku concert at Sogetsu Hall in Tokyo Dec. 8, 2009.
"Kaiun" by Yoichi Watanabe, performed by (from left to right) Daisuke Watanabe, Isaku Kageyama, Yoichi Watanabe and Hiromi Ogawa.

The Autobiography of Yoichi Watanabe 2

2009-12-31T18:31:00.000-08:00

Isao Tokuhashi and I are working together in compiling an oral history of Yoichi Watanabe, the leader and founder of Tokyo taiko group Amanojaku.
Link to an earlier excerpt, and below another excerpt from the work-in-progress, "The Autobiography of Yoichi Watanabe _ as told to Isao Tokuhashi and Yuri Kageyama":

Most teachers set a two hour or three hour lesson and charge for those hours.
I don’t do that. When I teach a group, I teach from morning until night. That’s because we are going toward the same dream.
Maybe this makes me unprofessional. But I want to be moved. If the people I am involved with are passionate about the music, and they are moved, then I am moved. If I am dishonest to what I believe, I think people will see that.
And so I don’t think about the hours. It’s impossible to teach or create what I want in two or three hours.
The people who perform with me often break into tears. That’s when a teacher can feel truly fulfilled. That’s what I live for.
It’s the same if I go abroad. It gets very busy when I go to Brazil. There is no rest. We are going to lessons from morning until night. But some of the kids are waiting at the hotel for us to get back because they so much want to learn.
I believe that being a taiko drummer was the best job for me. But I also believe that it was a mission given to me by the heavens.
I needed to write a page in taiko history. I wanted to pave the way for those who come after me.
I needed to be able to teach with confidence or else my students won’t be able to play with confidence.
A professional performance is not a recital for friends.
A professional must be spiritually strong like an Olympic athlete undergoing Spartan training.
But without a relationship of trust, a teacher cannot make a student go through that kind of training. If you have not endured this kind of training, and become truly professional, you will be ignored in the professional world.
It all depends on the person. Some need to be scolded. Some need to be praised. Some pick it up without your having said a word, while others never get it even if you tell them many times.
I created the original music that is Amanojaku.
I never wavered. I was always going straight after that goal.
If the roots of a tree are rotten, then it will never flower. But if the roots are solid, the stem will grow strong.
While others paint in colorful oils, I am taking a sumi brush and painting to find my own way. Once I decided that, the rest was easy

winning and losing

2009-12-31T17:51:00.000-08:00

In sports, career, dating and other games people play in life, there is always a winner and there is always a loser. Most people spend their time and energy trying to win because winning is crucial to basic needs like survival. The fight of life is about reducing abuse and getting ahead. But how deceiving life can be. It is not really about this kind of winning vs. losing at all. Each and every life holds potential for being a different kind of win that produces no losers at all. Think about the certainty of death and think about what you value the most _ what gives you truest and purest fulfillment. Life is about yourself _ and only yourself. This kind of winning is about winning for yourself. It is a win that cannot be handed to you. It is not being defined outside of yourself. People can win the game of life, hoarding riches and status and empty feel-goodness and turn out a total loser in finding the meaning of life. When you create that music, that poem, that story that feels just right, and when you feel so very close to the meaning of life in that moment, that is a win. When you find that love with no reason except that you love, whether it's for your lover, your child, your protege, your art, the people of the world, or all the generations of humankind that come after you, that is a win.

company you keep

2009-12-31T17:33:00.000-08:00

I am so tickled proud to see my name right in-between Roberta Flack and Don Ayler in the list Eric Kamau Gravatt keeps on his Web page for collaborators.

Drumming in 2010

2009-12-31T17:15:00.000-08:00

A HAPPY UPBEAT NEW YEAR with taiko drumming by Isaku Kageyama with Seijuro Sawada on shamisen _ all to House DJ-ing _ at the Mandarin Oriental in Tokyo during the countdown celebrations Dec. 31, 2009 and Jan. 1, 2010. Dancing, champagne, music and plenty of multicultural spirit to guide us through 2010.

Another video at this link.

love over time

2009-12-26T20:47:00.000-08:00

love over time
a poem by Yuri Kageyama

if you have to ask
it is not love
you would be there
right now
making that love
over time
even
if it is not
love now
if you can think
it is not love
life without your
lover
giving that love
over time
grows
into love
forever

hey _ this poem is fit for a greeting card !
so perfectly timed: happy holidays.
not that i understand love at all.
but i do believe that if you can sit back and analyze if this or that relationship should or should not be pursued, well, that's not love.
love means there is no other way of thinking.
love means no choices.
you have to be with this person and there is no other way about it.
you want to give, no conditions attached, despite all the betrayals, disappointments, hardships and maybe even the realization the love was just an illusion and not real at all.
over all that time, what you did, what you chose to stand behind _
and that you _ are real.
that's not an illusion, right?
you are that person.
and all those years _ that history _ over which you lived life believing in that love, no one can take that away from you.
you earned it.
that's love.

Countdown Party

2009-12-25T00:39:00.000-08:00

Seijuro Sawada, shamisen prodigy, will be collaborating with taiko drummer Isaku Kageyama in a multicultural Countdown Celebration at the Mandarin Oriental in Tokyo,
The Sanctuary 3F.
2-1-1 Nihonbashi Muromachi, Chuo-ku, Tokyo
Nearest Station: Mitsukoshimae.
Welcome in 2010 with taiko and shamisen performed by masters to DJ House and start the Year of the Tiger right.
Contact Isaku for reservations and discount admissions.

learning about pride

2009-12-20T22:01:00.000-08:00

as a parent, i have always tried to instill in my son pride in one's identity (race, culture, national origin).
but i don't think i was ever truly proud.
somewhere deep inside, there was that feeling of being a second-class citizen because i was not white/Anglo-Saxon/a Westerner/an american.
asserting one's pride is the mirror image of that feeling of inadequacy.
if you were really so proud, you wouldn't need to keep saying it.
the whole idea of having to say it over and over again means you aren't so sure and you aren't so proud.
watching my son grow up to be a taiko drummer has helped me learn what true pride in one's identity is.
because there is more to it than just telling yourself over and over that it's OK not to be white.
it is about seeking meaning in your life, pursuing a way of life, including everyday things like the place where you choose to live, the music you choose to listen to, the artists you emulate as your models.
taiko is all about being Japanese although it is a strong statement that holds appeal to the international audience in the same way that the music of Paganini or Mozart holds appeal to the international audience, including many Asians.
in that sense, i have never really been Japanese because my cultural references are Western _ rock 'n' roll, James Joyce, Biblical Salvation, Claude Monet.
there is nothing really wrong with this because being international is a good thing, and art is about transcending the confines of prejudices and boundaries of consciousness.
but watching my son grow up to pursue a Japanese form of music is helping me come to terms with the incompleteness and imperfections of my pride.
now i know, i was never really proud.
i was always ashamed and felt inadequate, even afraid.
i was never sure of what i was trying to pass on to future generations as pride.
or that was precisely why i was so determined to teach my son that pride.
but when i saw that pride staring back at me in my son and how beautiful and oh so Japanese taiko can be,
i was confronted with pride in its truest and purest that stem so deep from one's soul from someone so close to me that he is a part of me.
and so now that pride is mine.

Life is good

2009-12-20T22:00:00.000-08:00

LIFE IS GOOD.

ego and egoism

2009-12-09T20:49:00.001-08:00

Art is all about ego.
Even if you are the kind of artist who believes that only amateurish art is about self-expression and true art is about something else entirely, no one disagrees that art can stem only from the self that is the artist.
Most forms of selfishness as they play out in society are negative, often evil.
People want to save their own asses and want more money, status, privileges, at the cost of others, and so place themselves in career/society/hierarchy to feed that ego and that egotistical need.
This is the reality that is 99.99999 percent of reality.
This is the reality that I don't understand and never have understood.
It is not particularly interesting and certainly not satisfying.
Unfortunately, if we want to survive as human beings until death and support our family, we must deal with this torturous but undeniable 99.99999 percent of reality, since it IS 99.99999 percent _ if we count all the people who choose to be involved in this pursuit of career, money, status, etc. as valid values and goals vs. those who are interested in and satisfied by something else and become poets.
Poetry is a form of art that is as divorced from the worldly pursuits that make up 99.99999 percent of reality as things can get.
The ego takes center stage but in a way that is irrelevant from politicking, career advancement and mundane unbecoming unpoetic competition.
A poet is ego pure and simple and total and unafraid.
A poet exercises selfishness with a free conscience.

survival of the fittest and the apex predator

2009-12-06T05:07:00.001-08:00

in the animal kingdom, the strongest members of the species not only survive, they also get to mate or spawn and so they have the best chance to leave their genetic makeup and characteristics to future generations.
that is why females choose to have sex with powerful, rich, big, strong men.
in those Discovery Channel videos, male lions fight each other to decide on a winner that gets to mate.
in tuna, the males swim viciously over the eggs at the speed of a sportscar to spawn and so the strongest and fastest tuna get to leave their genes to legacy.
loser tuna are also swimming in the group and leaving their trails of sperm over the eggs but all too late because the eggs have already been fertilized by what the bigger and stronger male tuna spurted out.
and so it is forever the instinct for the female's own survival and her offspring/eggs and the survival of the species to seek out the strongest.
but the human being may be one species capable of reversing that.
what could be more inhumane than being the most powerful predator?
isn't it more desirable and attractive to be giving and humble, to sacrifice and accept honorable defeat instead of aggressively winning at someone else's cost?
why must we be tuna? or a lion?
why shouldn't being a loser be sexy?
to the enlightened liberated human female?

AMANOJAKU Taiko at Sogetsu Hall in Tokyo

2009-11-29T00:44:00.000-08:00

THE BEAT OF LEGACY - Dentou no Hibiki
AMANOJAKU Taiko Concert in Tokyo
TUE Dec. 8, 2009
Sogestsu Hall
7 p.m. (doors open 6:30 p.m.)

For tickets, please email: isaku.kageyama@amanojaku.info
Featuring composer, Amanojaku leader and founder YOICHI WATANABE
with HIROMI OGAWA, ISAKU KAGEYAMA, DAISUKE WATANABE, CHRIS HOLLAND and HIROMI SEKINE; guest on fue KYOSUKE SUZUKI.

Transcending age, sex and race

2009-11-27T21:02:00.001-08:00

When we get old, very very old, so old we are covered with wrinkles and our skin is pale and our breasts shrivel and droop and an old man looks and smells no different from an old woman, do we finally and once and for all transcend the barriers of sex and race?
By succumbing to the all-unifying power of age and soon-to-come death, do we victoriously overcome the hurt of sex and the murder of race and the divisions we must inherit as legacy of mankind like the taint of original sin?
When we get up in morning and look at what looks back at us in the mirror, will we no longer fear society's taunts for how we look and for the petty but definitive prisons of groupings for which we stand and must represent?
Will we at last have the choice of being nothing and so be someone who will not be defined by sex and race, and it will no longer matter whether you are man or woman, black, white or yellow?

Miwa Yanagi is one of my favorite artists because she addresses those very inner thoughts that have always tormented me. She has young women enact how they see themselves as old ladies and takes their portraits. Elevator girls and Amazonian women are other images she evokes for her powerful message. Yanagi never loses her delicate sensitivity and raw energy. She faces those fears head-on while the rest of us cower in shame and self-destruction.

hating weddings

2009-11-14T17:36:00.000-08:00

I've never liked weddings. I find them frightening.
Weddings are a very expensive performance designed to present an image of a social category called "married couple" that is proper and desirable and safe.
People spend a lot of time planning this performance, putting together slide shows of their childhood, picking out a package of gifts of porcelain and other knickknacks no one wants (though some couples have gotten smarter and instead give a catalogue so guests can pick out what they want but there is really nothing in the catalogue you want either), lining up a list of people to give speeches (the boring ones by bosses and former teachers, the teary goofy ones by friends) or put on horrible amateur acts (that should stay in the karaoke box where they belong).
It is a transition into adulthood _ the straight life.
It is a capitulation to the social definitions of Husband, Wife, Marriage, Man, Woman, Life, Career, Success.
It is often an opportunity for a woman to be the star for once, defined by an alleged beauty in absurd formulaic outfits (white dress, red kimono, etc.) so people can sigh and say oooh, how pretty she is, with the understanding that as she ages she can never quite be as nice-to-look at (i.e., socially valuable) as she is on that blessed day.
To negate or even question any of these definitions of what happens at a wedding so carefully orchestrated at considerable costs would be totally un-Japanese.
Love or whatever it is that happens that culminates in marriage is highly individualistic, private and spiritual.
But you'd never know it from watching the couple descend from a gondola covered with fumes and walk around lighting candles at tables decked with weird flowers and funny food.
Weddings usually show where people are really at _ in the end _ even if they have claimed for years to be more liberated.
They may say they are doing it for their parents.
It is frightening because it means that in the end we can never win against all these definitions not only because they are so powerful as dictated by society, but because they are so close to people's deepest emotions and values (which what doing it for your parents means).
They are growing up.
They are getting married.
They are leaving me behind.

MoveThatPoem

2009-11-09T04:46:00.000-08:00

To All who will MoveThatPoem,
Thanks for this book and the spirit that it brings transcending borders of nations and cultures.
I have added my poem and pass the book along to Maku, a poet in South Korea, the best person to take MoveThatPoem to its next step on its journey.
I wish it well and to all that it encounters,
Yuri Kageyama
Tokyo
November 2009

The Autobiography of Yoichi Watanabe

2009-11-01T08:00:00.000-08:00

Yoichi Watanabe, (photo by Naokazu Oinuma) leader of Tokyo taiko group Amanojaku, is relating his life history and his thoughts on taiko to Isao Tokuhashi and me.
It is a project that has just begun. And a lot of work still awaits.
But it fascinates me for what it promises to deliver in understanding of a great artist, an important era of post-war Japanese creativity and the conceptual and spiritual backbone of modern music called taiko.
Yoichi Watanabe founded Amanojaku in 1987.
But his story _ one man's journey in taiko _ began in the late 1960s, when he was about 10 years old.
He lived through the pioneering years of Tokyo-style taiko, playing with Sukeroku Daiko, founded in 1959 as this city's first professional kumi-daiko troupe.
An excerpt from "The Autobiography of Yoichi Watanabe _ as told to Isao Tokuhashi and Yuri Kageyama":

To be honest, I am not sure anyone would want to read a book about my life.
Besides, 10 years from now, my thoughts are bound to have changed, and I would need to write another book.
But I’ve always wanted to write down a certain philosophy on life that I have arrived at over the years in my own small way.
There is such a thing in life as the correct path _ a “seido.”
I am no different in having pursued what I thought was this correct path for me.
I have been doing it all my life.
I was in fourth grade when I decided I wanted to be a taiko drummer.
And I have never swerved from that path.
And it was just one path.
It was not an easy path, one filled with thorny bushes along the way.
But I have developed a way of looking at life through taiko.
And so this book is not a manual about how to play taiko.
Please look at a DVD or a read a manual textbook for that.
Everyone starts out with a dream, and then many people arrive at another way of life to make a living.
You may want to be a doctor or a pilot. But if you can’t realize that dream, you may have to settle on a more realistic job.
We are supposedly in the worst crisis in a century.
People are all working hard.
Perhaps they would be encouraged to find I have never gone far astray from my path over all these years.
I don’t have anything all that special to say.
It’s very ordinary. It’s no different from everyone else’s dreams.
If you keep yourself open, then you will realize your goal in all its depth and breadth.
That kind of spirit has been lost, this spirit I have strived to pursue all my life.
It’s human to seek the easy way, but I have stuck to the way even if it meant hardships.
If people tell me to go one way, then sometimes I question that and go counter-clockwise.
I have always been a rebel, an Amanojaku.

food for thot

2009-10-24T19:01:00.000-07:00

food for thot
a poem by Yuri Kageyama

japanese cars must be like sushi, tempura, kaiseki
the designer pontificates at a party
to add value and defy the challenge from hyundai of korea
like yakiniku korean barbecue and bibimbap

think of all the poor people in india
the nun swishing her black habit prays
the chicken soup swimming in the urn turns into urine and
the bread into styrofoam sponge in our throats

let's have a picnic here, mommy, OK?
my son plunks down in the grass
he eats boiled eggs, claiming his place in the japanese family,
believing they are delicious, the best in the world

when will my husband be able to eat again?
my mother asks the doctor, who answers, "never"
after brain surgery, tubes trickle paste through a hole in his stomach
he gurgles in mucus, his eyeballs batty with fright

Isaku takes a stand

2009-10-24T18:06:00.000-07:00

It is so important for a person to take a stand for the music, or whatever else, he or she stands for.
And Isaku really took a stand _ literally on his cajon _ with Winchester Nii Tete and Cari at "The Beat Ahead" at Harajuku Crocodile in Tokyo.
Isaku Kageyama has been playing professionally for years in Amanojaku, the taiko troupe led by his master teacher Yoichi Watanabe, as well as other contexts.
Those situations often required the player to carry out the vision of the leader or pull the whole group together.
A lot of musical technique, hard work and dedication is involved in carrying that out.
But something different happened that night.
Isaku told his own story, holding his own with full accountability for what he stands for _ his own colors, his own music, his own view of the world.
It was a cathartic moment for my son _ and for me.
All the technique in the world doesn't make sense or take meaning without this sense of purpose.
And that's what makes it all _ the pursuit of technique, the years of hard work, the struggles of everyday life _ worth it: That real purpose.
It was stunning to see the transformation before me, although I knew all along someday it would happen.
I forgot to take photos.

more on YouTube

"The Beat Ahead" opened with a rock group led by Isaku's new collaborator Yuu Ishizuka, who hails from Oedo Sukeroku Taiko.
The closing segment was all taiko with Isaku and Yuu collaborating.
It was great to see drummers from different backgrounds share ideas and create new sounds _ something that surprisingly happens rarely in the world of taiko.
There is so much more to be explored.

Music at the Moon Stomp

2009-10-11T09:19:00.000-07:00

From left to right: Isaku Kageyama, Winchester Nii Tete, Robby.
The "MoveThatPoem" poets from Spain read after the music at the Moon Stomp in Koenji Tokyo Sunday Oct. 11, 2009.
The music keeps getting stronger.
And the poetry _ read in their Spanish original by the poets, followed by English translations _ was a perfect way to end a multicultural evening.
Isaku plays with minyo musicians tomorrow night Monday, Oct. 12, 2009, at Takanoya in Shinjuku, Tokyo.

Move that poem

2009-10-11T08:38:00.000-07:00

Miguel
Rafel
Javier

Today, I got "MoveThatPoem," one of just five books in the world, created by poets from Spain _ Miguel Jose Aniceto Bardisa, Rafel Llobet Deia, and Fco. Javier Barrera Barcelo (seen in photos reading at the Moon Stomp in Tokyo) _ for an experiment into poetry and mobility, to answer the question of what will happen to this book if it gets passed from poet to poet, crossing national boundaries, language and cultural differences, and to see what the power of connection of poetry does to the problems of physical space: "What has happened to the inner journey of the poet," the poets ask.
"The goal of the MoveThatPoem initiative is to make the poetic object, as the physical object of the project, travel as an independent entity and be transformed thanks to the individual recipient's interaction with it .... Why poetry? Because we believe that poetry is a universal concept present in all cultures. For this reason, the ultimate concept of the MoveThatPoem initiative does not include any attempt to deal with language barriers beyond the original work, but merely to create a poetic object capable of being understood above its formal level by any person who may have it in hand, a living object that can break out of the literary circles in which it has, on occasion, remained buried, a living object that is consolidated as a site of free expression for whomever so desires."
I will write a poem in this book and then pass it on, keeping in mind that the book wants to be set free in its world travels.
The journey the book takes will be documented on a special website called MoveThatPoem, which will be up by Oct. 30,
or through email: routes@movethatpoem.com

Fear of death

2009-10-09T19:10:00.001-07:00

If you ever panic about the impermanence of life, if you ever get worried about your job, your relationships, your future, if you fear death, the best way to put all that turmoil to rest is to reassure yourself that death will come _ surely, whether you worry or not, whether you try to stop it or not.
All of it will end _ surely.
Since you know this, you could conceivably go berserk and kill everyone you ever hated before you kill yourself.
This is one obvious scenario. And daily headlines tell us some people really do this, thinking they are justified.
OK and so why doesn't everybody go out and do this, since death comes oh so surely.
We want to leave this world a better place for those who are still alive, and this means that we don't really deep inside believe that death ends everything, though it comes, surely, as we know it.
There is something else that goes on forever.
Like our love for our children, including other people's children.
Simple things like the light of the stars, the taste of food in our mouths, a blade of grass, the scentless smell of the wind.
Simple things that are so forever complex.

Interviews with Isaku Kageyama on taiko

2009-10-09T18:34:00.000-07:00

Isaku Kageyama, taiko drummer with Amanojaku, has an interview in the latest Metropolis, Tokyo's entertainment magazine.
He is interviewed in Japanese in Moonlix magazine, which has also interviewed Ryuichi Sakamoto and Yoko Ohno _ pretty good company.
Isaku is putting on a rare kind of show _ a collaboration of taiko drummers from two different schools _ with Yuu Ishizuka at the Crocodile near Harajuku, Tokyo, Thursday Oct. 22, 2009.
Also appearing that evening will be Winchester Nii Tete from Ghana, Chris Holland from Denver and others.

THE BEAT AHEAD
THU OCT. 22, 2009.
from 7:30 p.m.; doors open at 6 p.m.
Harajuku Crocodile
TEL: 03-3499-5205
ADDRESS: 6-18-8-B1 Jingu-mae Shibuya-ku Tokyo 150-0001.
3,000 yen for advance tickets, 3,500 yen at door.

OTHER EVENTS:
Isaku performs with Winchester at the MOON STOMP in Koenji tomorrow night, SUN Oct. 11.
Starts 8 p.m., doors open 7 p.m.
A good deal at just 1,000 yen door charge.
The following day, MON Oct. 12, a national holiday in Japan, Isaku plays minyo (Japanese traditional folk music) at TAKANOYA in Shinjuku, Tokyo, with singing, shamisen and shakuhachi.
Starts 7 p.m., doors open 6:30 p.m.
Advance tickets 2,000 yen plus one drink at 600 yen.
At door 2,500 yen plus one drink at 600 yen.

Mamako Yoneyama makes dishes fly for women

2009-09-23T01:00:00.000-07:00

Long before working mothers became so accepted they're TV-drama heroines, there was a gathering of feminists in Tokyo, where pantomimist Mamako Yoneyama performed a piece on womanhood that ended with her hurling paper plates into the air,
luminous white circles flying like spaceships, one by one, from her hand toward us, gifts of strength and hope.
They were just pieces of paper after they fell to earth.
But Yoneyama, with her voice, movement, character and presence, made them undoubtedly artistic statements.
Maybe things have changed for the younger generation.
But back then, when I was juggling job and motherhood, I was treated as an anomaly to be despised, maybe someone who was abusing her child with neglect.
Kids would come up to my son and ask with a straight face: Do you have a mother?
So unused were they to the idea that a mom could possibly be working and couldn't be there to pick them up, volunteer with the PTA, gossip in school hallways, schmooze with teachers.
The image was unforgettable _ a woman tackling a humble stack of dishes _ transforming them with the beauty of movement, a whip of her delicate wrist, into a galaxy of light defying gravity.
After it was over, we gasped in a moment of joyous silence.
I want to read a poem and throw paper plates into the air _ line by line, in homage of Yoneyama.

The meaning of Google Books for a poet

2009-09-19T19:41:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I get struck with irrational panic about what is going to happen to my poetry and stories after I'm dead.
Maybe I'm just worried about what's going to happen to me after I'm dead.
But I worry for the future of my poems.
The technology of Google Books has worked as an eye-opener about the uselessness and irrelevance of such worries about how writing, already obscure, may disappear and be forgotten.
Books are rapidly getting digitized _ including books sitting in some corner of a forsaken library.
Google Books has publications I had forgotten my works were in _ like "A Good Day to Die" and "Ally" _ a review in Ms. magazine of an anthology that has my work, a paper I wrote in college.
It is heartening, though it should be obvious: Once you've written something, it is forever.
I should have known this.
But it's reassuring to see the publications pop up as data in a simple search on your laptop.
Poetry is about the search for the eternal.
Poetry is about connecting with the human condition that is forever.
I am not afraid of death, although I tremble in utter fear of death.
I know I can play the moments in my life, over and over, like reels of a movie, like lines of a poem, like a Google Books search.
I can travel back and forth between now, to times distant that came long before, and back again to that unknown sleep that comes after death.
I can play those moments.
Each moment that is now is eternal, even after I'm gone.

Book party for Frank Spignese

2009-09-19T07:06:00.000-07:00

There is a book party for Frank Spignese tomorrow night.
I wasn't going to miss it for the world anyway, but Frank has invited me to read. Thank you, Frank.
And congratulations on your book!!!

Where have all The Tokyo Flower Children gone?

2009-09-19T06:14:00.000-07:00

"Relative deprivation" is a concept in sociology, which refers to the common phenomenon of people's dissatisfaction not being correlated to the reality of oppression, but instead to perceived oppression.
This means human nature is such that people are most dissatisfied when they think they should be getting better treatment.
And that could be when things are getting better _ not necessarily worse as might be expected _ because it's all about perceptions.
The plight of Japanese youngsters isn't all that bad compared to their counterparts in many other nations.
But their sense of relative deprivation is quite intense because social pressures for them to conform and to do good are quite high.
Many outside of Japan would be proud of having landed an assembly-line job.
If you are Japanese, it is less than perfect.
Being shut out of a white-collar lifetime employment job after completing a degree from a prestigious college is often an embarrassment not only for the youngster but the entire family.
"Freeter" is a label assigned to the despised when many Americans would be happy _ and proud _ to just have a job, any job, even a "keiyaku" or "haken" (i.e., not lifetime employment) job!
Imagine the stigma in Japan for being unemployed.
And the jobless rate is at a record high 5.7 percent (which wouldn't be a record at all in places like the U.S.)
Relative deprivation is seething in Japan.
Random crime to vent out frustrations is on the rise.
The existence of random crime may not be all that surprising in other big cities of the world.
Not so for Japan, which has long boasted a reputation for being crime-free (not that any nation is truly crime-free).
So no one is prepared for a stabbing spree in a commuter train station or a beating at night in a park.
In the U.S., if a nut goes berserk in public, he/she would be dead quite quickly.
The police would shoot him/her.
In Japan, we read reports of police who have been unable to track down the perpetrator, let alone arrest him/her.
In the U.S., homes have several locks. In Japan, people go out leaving their doors unlocked.
In the U.S., some citizens are armed, take self-defense lessons, carry mace or at least avoid walking alone in dark streets.
In Japan, hardly anyone does.
It is a rather dangerous situation, even if the numbers of the relatively deprived youngsters who end up turning to crime are still few.
Japan simply isn't prepared.
There is a sense of hostility in the air.
There is a sense the best times for Japan are over.
The Tokyo Flower Children may be wilting _ remnants of the good old times _ just as the American hippies were of the 1960s.
More on the Tokyo Flower Children.
(video above: Jounetsu wo Torimodosou by Teruyuki Kawabata of CigaretteSheWas translation by Yuri Kageyama, who reads with Haruna Shimizu, and additional music by Winchester Nii Tete, Keiji Kubo, Yumi Miyagishima and Carl Freire in the TOKYO FLOWER CHILDREN performance of Multicultural Poetry and Music at the Pink Cow, Tokyo, June 8, 2008.)

money for art 2

2009-09-11T20:54:00.000-07:00

Hozumi Nakadaira (with Hybrid Soul guitarist Chris Young at a Tokyo gallery, which recently had a retrospective show) has been taking photos of jazz musicians for decades.
His photos of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington and other legends are a documentation of history _ and gorgeous testaments to their art.
He was one of the few who had bothered to take their photos _ legends making history.
Only the musicians appreciated he was there, snapping away with so much creativity their moments of creativity.
That's amazing.
What's even more amazing, Nakadaira has never made any money off his photos.
Making giant prints for exhibits is very expensive.
He can't sell them because they don't fit in any homes.
He sells smaller prints at a fraction of their cost at a several hundred dollars a piece, or replica post cards at cheaper prices even I can afford.
They don't make up for what he has had to spend on travel to take photos at concerts and clubs around the world.
Nakadaira complains people don't understand photography is art.
They ask to borrow his negatives _ for free _ as though the fruit of hours of effort and talent and work of love is an accidental commodity at a push of a button that can be borrowed and returned.
Nakadaira runs a cafe called "Dug" in Tokyo, where he used to have concerts by musicians you wouldn't expect to hear up so close.
But he had to stop the performances. His neighbors didn't like "the noise."
He still doesn't expect to make money from his photos _ those photos he takes carefully on old-fashioned film, those photos that have become album covers of famous artists, some taken right at Dug, transformed in his photo to a dramatic backdrop that claims its rightful place in the history of art, no longer a tiny, dark basement cafe.
There is no money. But he won't stop.

Eric Kamau Gravatt with McCoy Tyner Trio

2009-09-07T02:55:00.000-07:00

Eric Kamau Gravatt was in town with the McCoy Tyner Trio with Gerald Cannon for the Tokyo Jazz Festival over the weekend.
We thought it wasn't possible.
But Kamau sounds better than ever.
Strong music keeps getting stronger.
Thank you, Kamau.

From Yuri To Yuri

2009-09-07T02:42:00.000-07:00

From Yuri To Yuri _ Japanese Womanhood Across Borders Of Time
A Contemporary Renku Poem (a work in progress)
By Yuri Matsueda and Yuri Kageyama.

(15)
take this knife
lay it down on a round table of
rotting wood
a child trapped in a body with
big pale breasts
a lipstick mouth
listen to the end
coming
in silence
a frog with a tadpole tail
a tadpole with frog legs
too much
hope isn't good
you know what
to do
when things never change

neoteny
neoteny

^___<

(16)
hot roses vapored
became instant ash
left their reflection on his bones
highlighted in green
he is
as they say clean
pristine

^___<

(17)
to yuri from yuri
my solitary audience in blindness
i speak to you
our world sighs breathing in poem
a wilting whimper
a stabbing flash of sunflower
don't cry, don't die, don't lie
no one listens in deafness
but you speak to me
you are my solitary audience

preceding sections:
(14)

(13)

(7-12)

(1-6) _ where it all started, and which goes to show sometimes all you need is one person to connect with in a special way to create poetry.
Yuri and I are both women bilingual/bicultural poets/writers with what we feel is a special sensitivity.
It goes without saying we realize we are creating for a niche market. Just kidding.
It makes sense to us and that's what counts.

Connecting

2009-09-06T18:48:00.000-07:00

Bursts of myopic but weirdly proud hatred thrive on the Net under the guise of anonymity.
Words are spat out, and, oh, with such venom and total irresponsibility.
Even something as simple and powerless as a poem can touch the nerve of evil to expose an inner darkness.
They will fester in their own ignorance and be destroyed by their poison.
This is one kind of connection, as painful and depressing as it may be.
I have never thought that socializing at parties and dinners produces meaningful connections.
Connection happens when you create something with a musician, dancer, illustrator, someone who is as committed to a form of expression and a way of life as yourself.
I can breathe.
Everything fits.
Everything is going right.
We connect so perfectly with each other in a place where race, gender, age, nationality and other barriers don't matter.
Maybe there is no listener with whom to connect.
But that doesn't matter.

"My Eyes Tokyo" interviews Isaku Kageyama

2009-09-03T21:22:00.000-07:00

Photo by Naokazu Oinuma.

A podcast interview with Isaku Kageyama and his music by "My Eyes Tokyo," from Isao Tokuhashi.

"If I didn't play taiko, I don't know where I would be. I don't know what I would be doing right now. I might not be alive. I might be in jail."

Taiko gigs

2009-09-03T19:49:00.001-07:00

Photo by Ryan Bruss.
OCT. 4, 2009
AMANOJAKU concert at Kuroiso Bunka Kaikan,
490 Kami Atsu-zaki Nasu Shiobara-shi Tochigi 325-0026.
For tickets, please call 0287-63-3219.
Doors open 1 p.m. Music starts 2 p.m.
2,000 yen (1,000 yen for students).

OCT. 12, 2009
MINYO "LIVE" at Shinjuku Takanoya. 03-5919-0228.
Isaku Kageyama (taiko) with Rie Sakamoto (song), Seiemon Sawada (shamisen), Yoshinori Kikuchi (shakuhachi).
5-2-3-B1 Shinjuku Shinjuku-ku Tokyo 160-0022.
Doors open 6:30 p.m. Music starts 7 p.m.
Advance tickets 2,000 yen; at the door 2,500 yen.
For reservations, email: isaku.kageyama@amanojaku.info

OCT. 17, 2009
AMANOJAKU at DECHIKONKA, annual festival in Ehime Prefecture.
Call Kihoku city hall at 0895-45-1111.
Starts 6 p.m.

OCT. 22, 2009
THE BEAT AHEAD _ Wadaiko "live" at Harajuku Crocodile.
Featuring Isaku Kageyama and Yuu Ishizuka on taikos with Winchester Nii Tete, Chris Holland and other guests.
Call The Crocodile at 03-3499-5205.
6-18-8-B1 Jingumae Shibuya-ku Tokyo 150-0001.
Doors open 6 p.m. Music starts 7:30 p.m.
Advance tickets 3,000 yen. At door 3,500 yen.
For reservations, email: isaku.kageyama@amanojaku.info

DEC. 8, 2009
AMANOJAKU at SOGETSU HALL.
Call Sogetsu Hall at 03-3408-1154.
7-2-21 Akasaka Minato-ku Tokyo 107-8505.
Doors open 6.30 p.m. Music starts 7 p.m.
For reservations, email: isaku.kageyama@amanojaku.info

JAN 10, 2010.
AMANOJAKU Student recital TENSHONOKAI.
Kameari Lirio Hall 03-5680-2222.
Doors open 2 p.m. Music starts 2:30 p.m.
1,000 yen donation.

JAN. 15-FEB. 8
AMANOJAKU workshops in Brazil.

APRIL 18, 2010.
AMANOJAKU concert at TOKYO FM Hall.
Doors open 5:30 p.m. Music starts 6 p.m.
Tokyo FM Hall 03-3221-0080.
1-7 Kojimachi Chiyoda-ku Tokyo 102-0080.
For reservations, email: isaku.kageyama@amanojaku.info

rocket scientist

2009-08-29T03:16:00.000-07:00

rocket scientist
a poem by Yuri Kageyama

people sometimes laugh when they learn
my father was a rocket scientist
my father was also a child-beater
this is not a laughing matter
people think abusers are alcoholic degenerates,
unemployed high-school dropouts or drug addicts
who swing their wives around the room
clutching their hair and beating them
and beat the kid while at it
but my father needed to get violent because
he was under stress on his job
he worked for the Apollo program
you know the one when Armstrong the astronaut talks about
the one giant leap for mankind
he was one of the first Japanese who got to work for NASA
that's why I have a bit of a Southern accent
when I say words like: "you all" or "Alabama" or "NASA"
his office was at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama
everyone in my school worked for the military or for NASA
we still have an autographed photo of von Braun
when we got back to Japan,
he was on TV to talk about our trip to the moon
I wasn't that proud but my mother was proud
I was more scared about saying the wrong thing and setting him off
it was mysterious _ I never figured it out
one moment, he was joking, so witty and sharp
just like a rocket scientist
a jolly roly-poly guy
but he would change
and I would feel a fat whack against my head
it would get so infinitely dark before my eyes
inside my cavernous buzzing head
like I was swimming and spinning into outer space
and I would see tiny sparkling stars
he didn't drink or do drugs
he was a rocket scientist
when I got older and got the nerve
I asked him why he had done that
what was he thinking?
I wanted to know
and he said he didn't know
he helped us get to the moon but
the rocket scientist didn't know
he couldn't remember why he hit me at all

money for art

2009-08-29T03:01:00.000-07:00

This is what I heard from a dancer.
But the biggest stars of Tokyo Butoh troupe Dairakudakan, not just the student dancers, don't ever get paid to perform.
Instead, they must bring in money from outside jobs to a pool of funds that has been set up to support the group's performances and other artistic activities.
So they are paying to dance _ never mind worrying about getting paid to perform.
The question has already been answered.
You dance to dance. That's it.
The dance is separate from livelihood _ which must be dealt with outside of dance.
That's why I think Dairakudan performers exude that absolute confidence.
They look at us with disdain because they know they are pure and we are not.

Talking Taiko _ the Movie

2009-08-22T19:45:00.000-07:00

Yoichi Watanabe, master taiko drummer, shows his stuff at Bon Odori _ as he does each and every year (with Daisuke Watanabe and Isaku Kageyama of Watanabe-led Amanojaku).
Bon Odori
Conneting with the past
And all that went before us
Connecting with the future
And all that awaits
A poetic moment
Being a poet is seeing so much more in the everyday.
Bon Odori is the closing scene of "Talking Taiko," a movie I'm working on with Japanese director and film-maker Yoshiaki Tago.
He's doing his stuff on a Shibuya pedestrian walkway _ another place where we are finding a poetic moment.

trailer on YouTube

Do we write to live or live to write?
Do we write to remember or do we write to forget?
Do we write to remember or do we write to be remembered?
Do we write so we don't kill or do we write so we don't kill ourselves?
Do we make movies to live or live to make movies?
Do we make music to live or live to make music?
Do we write to live or live to write?
Do we live?
Do we live?
Do we live?

Amanojaku at Astro Hall

2009-08-20T08:51:00.000-07:00

Amanojaku led by master drummer and composer Yoichi Watanabe did their "live" concert at Astro Hall in Harajuku THU Aug 20.
The stage was so small their pieces like "Dotou" and "Bujin" got a different, bit cramped, look.
But the music was as forceful and fascinating as always.
And it's great Amanojaku is taking stage in a place like Harajuku.
You certainly got a close up look.
Chris Holland, from Denver Taiko, made his professional debut with Amanojaku and got a great strong sound on his odaiko solo.
Go Chris!
Amanojaku will be at a Bon Odori _ Japan's native dance festival for the homecoming of ancestral spirits.
So if you want to get down and dance and have fun, hop on the Seibu Ikebukuro Line to Minami Tanaka Danchi (housing projects) in Nerima Ward.
Get off at Nerima Takanodai station and follow the drumbeat.
Thank the Japanese gods for another summer that's over.

FRI Aug. 21 and SAT Aug. 22
長光寺橋公園盆踊り
練馬区南田中3-31
音出し18：00-21：00

Noticing accents

2009-08-15T18:50:00.001-07:00

I'd come home from international school, excited I had made a friend. I was puzzled one of the first questions my mother would ask was: What nationality is she? I had to think hard for an answer. I hadn't thought to ask. But she wouldn't stop probing: What color of hair does she have? Does she speak Japanese? What is her last name?
In hindsight, now that I am an adult, this sounds unbelievable. But I often couldn't remember what color hair she had _ maybe it was brownish? black? The most important thing _ the only thing that mattered, and I was maybe 10 years old, 8? _ was that I had found this person who for some reason liked me and was now my friend. Why didn't adults understand that this was what I wanted to talk about, not what nationality she was, or what color of eyes she had so we could figure out what nationality she was?
This may sound bizarre. But many people who attended international schools at a young age have the same experience. Of course, we knew that people came in different sizes and colors and had different preferences for what they liked to eat or do. But it was a mixed up blur of so many ways to distinguish people _ the tone of their voice, their laugh, their skills in coming up with games _ that big words like the Philippines, Iran, America, China, Zambia, whatever, were just tongue-twister that didn't seem half as interesting as the other, more fun ways to tell kids apart.
This is not as bizarre as it sounds. Scientists have found that Japanese babies learn very quickly not to pay attention to the difference between Rs and Ls. That doesn't matter in the Japanese language. For the same reason languages must be acquired early, a child learns what to pay attention to and what not to notice. The world is such a buzz of information, how we discriminate must be learned.
The innocent world, however transient or artificial, where nationality doesn't matter, felt so comfortable that when I learned it wasn't real _ or encountered cases when I had to finally face up to the fact that it wasn't ever real _ it was painful. It was more painful because I had gotten a taste of that innocent world. If I hadn't, I'd probably have accepted it with a shrug, the same way I wouldn't know the difference between Rs and Ls. I can roll my Rs like a salsa singer.
In Japan, a nation that prides itself on being homogeneous and harmonious, horror stories abound of children of Chinese or Korean ancestry routinely being harassed by Japanese, stalked daily, beaten, taunted. And they aren't even a different race.
Once acquired, the art of discrimination is something people thrive on, "ijime" that engrosses the masses.
I don't know why being discriminated for race or ethnicity or sex hurts so much more than being discriminated for performance or personal choices, even looks, another genetically determined feature. But it does. It makes me feel so vulnerable, as though I have been stripped naked, and I can't fight back. In Sociology, we learn race and sex are what we call "master traits." That means other qualities a person may acquire, such as education or career experience, can never ever ever override what is predetermined about that person by race and sex. It is more important in society that someone is black or yellow or white or that someone is male or female than that person happens to be an astronaut or a gangster. Can you imagine that? To me, that is ridiculously bizarre. I want everyone to learn from that child who rushes back to tell her mother she just found a friend _ never mind what nationality she is.

Isaku gets interviewed

2009-08-15T18:42:00.000-07:00

Photo by Naokazu Oinuma.

Isaku gets interviewed on his views on music, identity and the art of AMANOJAKU taiko in Isao Tokuhashi's "My Eyes Tokyo." A Podcast is in the works.

Literature, music and dance Aug. 23 at GAMUSO

2009-08-14T22:18:00.000-07:00

A message from organizer David Hoenigman:
Please don't forget PAINT YOUR TEETH vol. 4
Sunday, Aug. 23rd.
Gamuso in Asagaya.
6:30 door opens
A NIGHT OF PUSHING THE ENVELOPE OF LITERATURE, MUSIC AND DANCE
opens with IN MINOTAUR!!! going on at 6:45PM.
still only 1,000 yen ! (including 1 drink so really only 500 yen)

DEFEKTRETTS no boys allowed incarnation of junk machine sound pioneers DEFEKTRO: one dj and two noise makers.

David F. Hoenigman reads from his antinovel in progress "Squeal For Joy"
with a slide show featuring artwork by Yasutoshi Yoshida.

Yuri Kageyama has collaborated with musicians, dancers and visual artists in performances of her poetry. She has read with Ishmael Reed and Shuntaro Tanikawa among many others.

Kei Kunihiro death metal crooner and Internet sensation. 435,540 views and counting!

LIVING ASTRO the Joe Meek adoring rock/sample/synth mutant pop duo.

SHIT _ slapdash assembly of area experimental musicians on a burning ferris wheel: OWKMJ, Taishin Inoue, Ezra Woolnough and many others.

see you there!
David

photo by Annette Dorfman

2009-08-14T22:15:00.000-07:00

Jellyfish in Monterey
photo by Annette Dorfman.

write it down

2009-08-14T22:02:00.001-07:00

write it down
a poem by Yuri Kageyama

write it down
sumi strokes on rice paper
sway over incense
fold origami style and
tie on a tree
write it down
beatings by your father
betrayal by your lover
rapes by your neighbor
scorn from your enemy
write it down
not to remember for legacy
but to purge and purify
not notes for later but
simply to forget
write it down

Neoteny Japan

2009-08-08T19:16:00.000-07:00

Bejeweled gourds and intricately decorated dolls from Mayu Kikuchi make for yet another but superbly whimsical statement in Japanese neoteny art.
I asked her why so much of Japanese art looks this way, and she says that's so established these days, that's what sells and what art teachers steer you toward.
"Before, I used to do more grotesque pieces, like a knife stabbing the head," she motions with her hand toward her forehead, smiling, "and then things are spurting out."
She and her mother were selling her lovingly handmade works at an annual summer craft fair in Shiodome, Tokyo.
She has huge dolls, characters from strange tales in her mind, modern-day versions of Bunraku puppets.
Those weren't for sale because they had taken so long to make, said Kikuchi, 25.
Other works weren't quite so priceless.
And so one of her cloth fish and "kokeshi" madames now hang in our living room, swimming with joy and doubt about where they stand in the world of universal art.

THE BEAT AHEAD

2009-08-08T18:17:00.000-07:00

Isaku Kageyama of Amanojaku collaborates with Yuu Ishizuka formerly of Oedo Sukeroku in a rare concert that brings together different taiko schools _ and, while at it, forges an innovative "beat ahead" sound in Japanese percussion.
OCT. 22 Thursday at Crocodile in Harajuku, Tokyo 7 p.m. (doors open 6:30 p.m.)
advance tickets: 3,000 yen. at door: 3,500 yen.
Also featuring: Winchester Nii Tete, Chris Holland, Azn Steez, Bachi Atari.
Map to Crocodile
B1 New Sekiguchi Building
6-18-8 Jingumae Shibuya-ku Tokyo
150-0001
TEL: 03-3499-5205
For tickets: http://www.yuuishizuka.com/crocodile_ticketform.html

A Taiko Quizz

2009-08-04T07:17:00.000-07:00

A quizz for taiko-drummers from Isaku Kageyama (found on the Amanojaku Hozonkai Web page):

こんな経験はありませんか？

意気揚々とやぐらに上がったが、途中で音が取れなくなってしまい、焦る気持ちとは裏腹にどんどんズレていく。　踊り手がこちらを見ている！　ヤバイ！

カッコよく盆太鼓が打てるように8月2日、9日は滝野川で17：00-21：30まで盆踊りの稽古をします。　稽古では次のポイントなどをやりますので奮ってご参加ください。

1．　炭坑節が裏に返るところは？

A） Aメロの4小節目　B）Bメロの4小節目　C）炭坑節は裏に返らない　D）炭坑節って何だっけ？

2．　八木節の1バースは何小節？

A） 8小節　B）12小節　C）16小節　D）八木節は小説とかそう言う問題ではない

3.　郡上踊りのテンポは？

A） 55bpm　B）65bpm　C）75bpm　D）85bpm

4.　相馬盆唄や北海盆唄など「盆唄」のテンポは大体95bpm。　これは洋楽のどのジャンルと一緒？

A）ロック　B）ジャズ　C）R&B/ヒップホップ　D）レゲェ

答え合わせは8月2日、9日の稽古で！

KONCH Summer 2009

2009-08-03T05:47:00.000-07:00

My poem "Little YELLOW Slut" is in KONCH Summer 2009 edition.

Amanojaku Taiko and Sumida River Hanabi

2009-07-22T21:58:00.001-07:00

AMANOJAKU plays on a TV show about the annual Sumida River fireworks airing 7 p.m.-8:54 p.m. for a collaboration between Taiko and Hanabi.
Video found on YouTube showing (from left to right) Mayumi Kawana, Isaku Kageyama, Hiromi Ogawa the drummers of AMANOJAKU, led by Yoichi Watanabe.